7 Ways the IRS Supports Your Charitable Desires

[Editor’s Note: For those interested in the CityVest/Pathfinder deal discussed last week, the conference call with Alan Donenfeld is today at 1 pm EST. There will be another on Wednesday, same time. 515-739-1038, ID 688350#]

Guess what? The IRS (and thus Congress, the government, and Americans) wants you to give to charity. They know (like you should) that you will come out behind financially for doing so, but they want to lessen the financial pain a bit to encourage you to do more for humanity and the planet. Here are the seven tax breaks the IRS provides for charitable givers.

# 1 Charitable Deduction

This is the one that most people know about. If you write a check to charity, you can take the amount of that check as an itemized deduction on Schedule A. Of course, if you take the standard deduction (far more likely starting in 2018 with the new, higher standard deduction of $12,000 ($24,000 married) and the limit on the SALT deduction,) that donation isn’t going to reduce your taxes one lick. But if you do itemize, and you have at least $12,000/$24,000 of other itemized deductions such as taxes and mortgage interest, then the charitable donation should be completely deductible. So if your marginal tax rate is 42%, and you donate $10,000, that should reduce your tax bill by $4,200. Note that paying $10,000 to reduce your taxes by $4,200 is not a winning strategy. But if you’re going to give the money anyway, it’s nice to be able to do it with pre-tax